Double walled insulated drinking vessels are commercially available from various vendors. There are also numerous U.S. patents and published patent applications directed to doubled walled insulated drinking vessels, such as glasses, mugs, goblets, wine glasses and the like. See for example, U.S. patents and published applications: U.S. Pat. No. 4,872,569 (Bolte); U.S. Pat. No. 5,090,213 (Glassman); U.S. Pat. No. 5,553,735 (Kimura); U.S. Pat. No. 5,839,599 (Lin); U.S. Pat. No. 6,050,443 (Tung et al.); U.S. Pat. No. 6,405,892 (Volan); U.S. Pat. No. 6,419,108 (Toida et al.); U.S. Pat. No. 6,921,179 (Ghanem); U.S. Pat. No. 7,306,113 (El-Saden et al.); D519,785 (Bodum); D526,848 (Bodum); D557,561(Flowers et al.); 2004/0212120 (Giraud); 2005/0045643 (Ghanem); 2005/0173365 (McKnight); and 2005/0194340 (Huang).
While the insulated drinking vessels of the foregoing prior art may be generally suitable for their intended purposes, a need exists for drinking vessel which has a thin, but relatively long, drinking lip. The subject invention addresses that need by providing an insulated drinking vessel and method of making it.
The drinking vessel is formed of a pre-molded inner vessel having a top portion on which a ring of a plastic material is molded in-situ to produce a non-superficial homogenous joint. The inner vessel is located within an outer vessel, with a top portion of the inner vessel welded to a portion of the ring.